Unlicensed insurance CEO charged in Florida fraud case

By Greg Groeller
Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer
May 23, 2002

The head of a company that sold health insurance to thousands of Floridians without a license was arrested Wednesday by fraud investigators for the Florida Department of Insurance.

David Andrew Weinstein, 43, chief executive of N.A.P.T. of Philadelphia, faces two felony counts of communications fraud. He flew from Philadelphia to Miami to surrender to investigators.

N.A.P.T. went out of business after the Insurance Department shut down the company's Florida operations in March. Regulators estimate that the company left behind $2.5 million in unpaid health insurance claims in Florida alone.

Weinstein is the third executive of an unlicensed health insurer to be arrested in Florida. In February, two executives of Well America Inc. of Miami were arrested for transacting insurance without a license.

Insurance Department officials said the agency is pursuing executives of other unlicensed carriers, as well as independent agents who sold unlicensed policies.

"It is a crime to sell insurance in Florida without a license, and those who do it will be prosecuted," Insurance Commissioner Tom Gallagher said.

The agency began investigating several unlicensed carriers after receiving complaints from consumers who said the companies were not paying their claims. Some victims were left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills.

Unlike insurers that are licensed by the state, unlicensed carriers frequently do not hold money in reserves to pay big claims.

When N.A.P.T. could no longer afford to pay claims, Weinstein submitted the claims to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Pennsylvania, which provided health insurance to N.A.P.T.'s employees, under the guise that the claims were actually for N.A.P.T. workers, the Insurance Department said.